On Contemplating Snow:

Despite the hours I sat on the window seat watching the snow come down yesterday, I got up early and sat watching it lay still and pale in the moonlight this morning.

Yesterday I stopped to take a look at the snow coming down. ‘Only a moment.’ I told myself. Then, ‘Just let me get a cup of tea.’ I thought. ‘Put on some music. Wrap myself in a blanket. Grab some knitting.’

Ahh! But it was too late.

I had looked. I had sat down. I was hooked. And like a small child I watched the flakes float down and collect in my yard. They landed on the grass. The stone wall. The bushes and trees. Frosting! Fluffy white frosting!

I let my mind wander to its own fanciful tune. Sleigh bells, winter (not Christmas) songs played endlessly in my head until even they went away. Santa was not thought of, he was still too far away. I was in the moment. Riding a snowflake as it drifted on the almost nonexistent breeze.

A bird on the feeder, first one then another, would try to catch my attention. But the snow itself held me fast. I stopped thinking about the structure of the flakes themselves, the cold, the job of clearing the walk, snowballs and snowmen and forts. I just let go.

I was, like a two year old, seeing snow for the first time. Watching each flake bank in the breeze. Whorl in the wind. Come to rest ever so lightly with its friends.

Collecting, amassing, congregating, building. A quite blanket coating the familiar making it bright, fresh and new. The hours fled by and I sat watching the snow.

I was up at four thirty this morning and couldn’t resist just watching the stillness of the moonlit landscape outside my door. Trying to recapture the innocence of watching the snow come down outside my house again. Looking for the feeling of ‘not one speck of guilt for the things I wasn’t getting done.’ It didn’t come. Today I’m a grow-up again. Remembering sitting, not thinking or caring, and just watching snow.